Companies and individuals have dealt with this problem in several ways, from keeping sensitive data off laptops traveling internationally, to storing the data — encrypted, of course — on websites and then downloading it at the destination. I have never liked either solution. I do a lot of work on the road, and need to carry all sorts of data with me all the time. It’s a lot of data, and downloading it can take a long time. Also, I like to work on long international flights.

Schneier goes on to describe a rather complex process involving full disk encryption and trusted parties outside the country. His process won’t prevent Customs from detaining you.

I think Appelbaum’s solution is much more practical. You can’t compel someone to decrypt a file that you don’t have.

-S

]]>By: bardfinnhttp://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/wikileaks-volunteer.html#comment-849159
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-849159The fact that the investigators intended to image his storage — despite the fact that it would almost certainly be encrypted with strong encryption — tells me that someone somewhere has a couple of trailers / warehouses full of information appliances dedicated to brute-force cracking readily available encryption schemes, and that they’re willing to apply a very large amount of resources towards acquiring evidence against anyone involved in leaking those war diaries.

Or they want us to think they can crack strong encryption.

Or they thought he might have Windows on the machine.

]]>By: D2Shttp://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/wikileaks-volunteer.html#comment-849160
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-849160I’m surprised they didn’t just shoot him.. it’s not like the sheeple will uprise out of their reality show/social network slumber or anything…
]]>By: EHhttp://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/wikileaks-volunteer.html#comment-849163
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-849163Hah, this Wikileaks business is getting good indeed. I can’t wait to see how it blows up.
]]>By: onlinetvhttp://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/wikileaks-volunteer.html#comment-849931
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-849931he hard drive would have been a bonus, but I suspect they are after new leads (his social network), which they were able to obtain by imaging his mobile phones.

The next step in security is to keep all the firmware and memory of your mobile devices stored on a encrypted private remote network.

]]>By: orwellianhttp://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/wikileaks-volunteer.html#comment-849165
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-849165Heh, I was thinking the same thing.
]]>By: dredeyedickhttp://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/wikileaks-volunteer.html#comment-849166
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-849166I asked the White House Press Office on Thursday afternoon and again Friday if it was a higher priority for the Obama administration to capture Bin Laden, or to detain and “question” Mr. Assange.

Still No Answer.

On Friday, I also asked if it was true, as Assange contend, that the White House “declined” to assist the New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel go through the documents to perform “Harm Minimisation.”

]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/wikileaks-volunteer.html#comment-849167
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-849167I would put the laptop on Ebay. Who knows WTF they did to it.
]]>By: asuffieldhttp://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/wikileaks-volunteer.html#comment-849173
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-849173Well that was stupid. Blatant harassment that entirely fails to make progress on any legitimate investigation. All that the US government got out of this was some bad press.

Clearly a knee-jerk reaction.

]]>By: orwellianhttp://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/wikileaks-volunteer.html#comment-849176
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-849176I might be wrong but while the leaking of things might be illegal, the dissemination of the information itself isn’t. The person that leaked the Afghan stuff will probably go to prison but the Wikileaks people didn’t break US laws as far as I know. I imagine the ‘oh, this is a random search, we just happened to have FBI agents here and something to copy your hard drive’ thing would be illegal or questionable enough to make it hard to get anything they obtain from the phones put into evidence at a trial.

As a conservative, I remember when we used to respect people’s right to disagree with one another. Wikileaks, while making me angry at times, should be protected by free speech. There’s no law against privacy and if it can be stretched to allow partial-birth abortion, it should be able to cover a damn cell phone (Keep your laws off my mobile!). Still think Julian Assange should cut his damn hair, though, he looks like David Spade.

Ding-ding-ding, correct answer, you get to play again. Good on ya, mate.

included a U.S. Army investigator

I wonder where he came from. Was he permanently stationed at Newark? Had he been pre-positioned to take part in Mr. Appelbaum’s “random screening”?

I would put the laptop on Ebay. Who knows WTF they did to it.

You got that right. I’m also half-surprised the investigators don’t offer replacement phones to use during the period while the others are seized — you know, to avoid inconveniencing anyone — although fortunately Mr. Appelbaum would be smart enough to decline.

Yeah, blood on his hands my butt. Let’s talk about all the blood on the Govt. hands in a quest for greed, power, oil, gas. This is a war of economic gain, not freedom for the poor Afghanie people. Get over it. Wiki leaks is doing the right thing because the govt. is not. No one is in danger, no one is going to get hurt, AND IF THEY DO OH WELL ITS WAR, STUPID.

]]>By: jabo27http://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/wikileaks-volunteer.html#comment-849186
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-849186How long before he or someone like him ends up in Guantanamo? Isn’t he an enemy combatant or something.
]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/wikileaks-volunteer.html#comment-849698
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-849698If Mr. Appelbaum is a criminal then these are indeed Orwellian times.
]]>By: coaxialhttp://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/wikileaks-volunteer.html#comment-849187
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-849187So the anonymous source is Applebaum himself, right? The only other people privy to what happened in the room are the TSA and FBI folks, and their not going to be talking to some website that just conducted an interview with the target, nor do they have any motivation to try and make the government look heavy handed.

You’re not anonymous Jacob.

To mix my metaphor and quote someone about a friend of mine, “The light is on. The door is open, and we’re all standing around looking in. Just come on out.”

]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/wikileaks-volunteer.html#comment-849188
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-849188While the original source probably is him, that doesn’t mean he is the source for the article. Most likely he told the story to some people close to him, and one of them is the ‘anonymous’ source.
]]>By: igpajohttp://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/wikileaks-volunteer.html#comment-849189
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-849189Man I would have had all kind of horrible thoughts when they told me “You’re not being arrested, you’re being detained.” Isn’t that kind what what happening to all the folks in Guantanamo?
]]>By: Xeni Jardinhttp://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/wikileaks-volunteer.html#comment-849190
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-849190That’s a silly thing to say.

“Harassed,” but not “detained”?

Okay, 4chan delivering dozens of hate-pizzas to your house, or me prank-phone-calling you while impersonating the Double Rainbow guy’s voice? That is harassment.

According to the Boing Boing post (and the CNET story), Appelbaum was held by the ICE agent(s) and Army investigator in an interview/interrogation room at the airport for hours, refused the right to make a phone call, refused access to his attorney, and not permitted to leave.

Fits the definition of “to be detained.”

]]>By: spockohttp://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/wikileaks-volunteer.html#comment-849193
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-849193You are thinking about my friends at the NSA.
You know all those Ph.Ds who used to work on cracking Russian codes before the cold war? They had some time on their hands and of course Americans can be enemies too so that is what they are doing. But the one thing that might work in our favor is the problem of silos.

The NSA doesn’t always work with the FBI and or the TSA. They don’t have the same resources. The FBI, for example, used to have terrible computer search capability internally. They won’t tell that to the public, but it was terrible (this was in 1998)

TSA have proven their lack of skill in this area too. However if the Army gets it and they asks the NSA to do this because of “national security” well then it’s a different story.

Nothing is uncrackable with enough social engineering, hardware and math/computer wises.

How do I know? I’d tell you but then they would kill me. (just kidding, I won’t tell you.

]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/wikileaks-volunteer.html#comment-849194
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-849194I have a 16GB PCMCIA hard drive that is not image-able, since it requires a custom driver… and not one that EnCase or FTK has.
]]>By: Daedalushttp://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/wikileaks-volunteer.html#comment-849965
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-849965

The Afghan government is terrible. For the majority of Afghans, the Taliban is in many ways worse. If I were a Tajik or Uzbek living in the Pashtun belt, or an educated woman, I would be cooperating with the coalition forces. This is not because the coalition forces or the Afghan government are “good,” in any objective sense, but because my life would be incomparably worse under the Taliban.

This “father knows best” mentality is vomit-inducing.

The Taliban are basically seeping assholes of the highest caliber, but the arrogance to think, for even a moment, that you could put yourself in that scenario and choose one foreign group who was killing your children over another domestic group who was killing your children, is repellant.

If anyone can provide security, stability, and happiness in that country, it will not be the US. It will be the people of that country. And they’re a long way from having the luxury of being able to look to the long-term good (which may not be the US, anyway).

]]>By: RevEnghttp://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/wikileaks-volunteer.html#comment-849198
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-849198My poor America, where did your laws go? He wasn’t charged, given a phone call or an attorney, or otherwise given any of his rights, yet they searched him, interrogated him, confiscated his stuff and tried to copy it all. Where did your laws and your rights go? I hope he takes this opportunity to charge them for illegal search and seizure. Unfortunately, I bet the PATRIOT Act somehow allows them to do this.

If law enforcement doesn’t follow the laws,then the laws are meaningless. This is judicial anarchy.

]]>By: bardfinnhttp://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/wikileaks-volunteer.html#comment-849199
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-849199“Or, maybe they have physical access and can install any number or manner of trojan to capture the keys or data once decrypted.”

True. However, have you ever viewed the source code for your silicon? Inspected the etch masks? A relatively small number of people on this planet are fully aware of what, precisely, a particular piece of silicon logic is capable of doing. There might already be a keylogger / trojan buried in the ethernet controller for all we know.

Did you miss where the original poster characterized the collaborators outed by Wikileaks as traitors who need a Taliban bullet in the head? It’s not “father knows best.” It’s merely that collaborating is a defensible position for people put in the awful position of being in Afghanistan.

]]>By: netsharchttp://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/wikileaks-volunteer.html#comment-849200
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-849200Boy did those agents pick on the wrong people, the WikiLeaks people must have their own training on how to prepare and deal with the Gestapo checks; don’t carry anything incriminating, don’t provoke them, and don’t answer any question except with “I want my/a lawyer.”

Not having a harddisk on his laptop sure is a cool hack though. FedEx-ing it would be too slow, and bandwidth is great enough to transfer around a very-heavily encrypted archive of data he needs. If I were setting up something like that, I’d backup my exact Ubuntu configuration including apps to install, encrypt that info and put it somewhere online. Then I’d travel, disk-less, to my destination, get a Ubuntu DVD, restore apps and settings according to the configuration I’d made, and then download the encrypted archive which is my personal data, which will probably be not more than 10GB.

The question is, how do I securely transfer my encryption key? Put it online and password-protect it? Doesn’t seem very safe.

Also, I believe all modern disks have built-in encryption activated, with an encryption key stored on disk. If you set a disk password in the BIOS, that key will be stored encrypted (using your password to decrypt), otherwise, the key will be stored as is, making accessing data transparent… but probably the disk manufacturer has their own key to decrypt them.